Stone Cold

His brows raise. “Wow. Good for you.”

Our eyes catch and he lets his linger for a minute too long, as if he’s adding up all of these tidbits of information and trying to form an idea of the woman I’ve become without him. Despite the fact that we’ve remained ‘friends’ on social media, my profile is pretty bare bones. A handful of images and no mention of my quickie marriage anywhere. I prefer it that way—privacy is priceless, and the ones who need to know what’s going on in my life will always hear it from me firsthand.

Our server returns with our orange juices and a promise to come back to take our orders shortly.

Jude waves his ticket and glances toward the cash register in the front of the diner.

“I better go take care of this. It was good running into you guys,” he says before his attention locks on me again. “I’m glad you’re doing well, Jovie. I really am.”

“Thanks,” I say, leaving it at that.

“Monica.” He turns to her, tipping his chin down. “Good to see you too.”

“As always,” she says, plastering a fake grin on her face that would appear genuine to anyone else but me.

The instant Jude leaves, I exhale a long, hard breath.

“That was interesting.” Monica dips a paper straw into her orange juice and takes a sip. “Did you see the way he was looking at you?”

I roll my eyes.

“No, really. He couldn’t take his eyes off of you,” she adds. “And did you see the look on his face when I mentioned you moved here with your husband?”

I reach for my glass. “I wasn’t really paying attention …”

“Whatever,” she says.

Our server returns just in time for Stassi to emerge from the ladies’ room. For a fleeting moment, our gazes intersect. She looks away first, her nose tilted up ever so slightly and her high heels clicking on the tile floor as she passes.

“Who the hell wears five-inch heels to a diner for breakfast?” Monica asks once Stassi and our server are long gone.

“Maybe they were going somewhere else after this.” I shrug, unfolding my paper napkin and spreading it across my lap—as if that could make our food arrive any faster.

“Do you think she has a personality?” Monica asks.

I chuckle. “You don’t have to do this …”

“Do what?”

“You don’t have to rag on her to make me feel better,” I say. “It’s fine.”

“I’m not ragging on her. I’m genuinely curious,” she says. “She just seems like such a little snot. And we already know she’s a boyfriend stealer.” Monica shudders. “Something about her just turns me off. I don’t know. It sure makes you wonder what he sees in her. She looks like she’s allergic to fun and costs a lot of money to maintain—and you’re telling me he wants to spend the rest of his life with that?”

“Stop, stop,” I stifle a laugh and wave my hand at her. “I don’t pretend to understand it. I figure they probably deserve each other and that’s all I need to know.”

She stirs her OJ with her straw. “You’re a bigger person than I am. If Chauncy ever left me for someone like her, you’d have to stop me from giving him a vasectomy with rusty scissors.”

None of that surprises me.

Monica’s loyalty to her husband is only outpaced by her mile-wide jealous streak.

“Anyway …” I say when our breakfast arrives at warp speed.

We spend the rest of our meal discussing her newest PR client and my next book idea and where we want to go for our girls’ trip this summer. By the time we’re done, I almost forget about our run-in with Jude.

Chapter Fourteen

Stone

* * *

“Tuxes are officially ordered,” Jude says over the phone Monday afternoon.

“Ah, good. I was starting to worry,” I say, monotoned.

“Don’t act too excited,” he sniffs back a laugh. “Stassi changed them to black and white at the last minute. She said the navy blue was too cliché.”

“She would know,” I say, still monotone as I sent an email to my assistant about pulling a file for me.

“You sound like you’re busy.”

“And you sound like you’re bored.”

Odds are he is. When he first started dating Stassi, her dad took a liking to him and offered him a job here in Portland; some mid-level management position where he was in charge of a small department. After a few years, he worked his way up. And once he and Stassi got engaged, her dad created some position for him at the top—something with a respectable title, minimal responsibilities, unlimited PTO, and a fat paycheck.

Some people are born lucky.

Others marry into it.

“I ran into Jovie over the weekend,” he says.

I stop typing, my fingers frozen over the keys.

“No shit?” I ask. I didn’t mention running into her at the grocery store the other day. It seemed neither here nor there. That and we hadn’t spoken since last week.